Me too. The atronach is perhaps the only one that can't be replaced by spells and enchantments. You can get absorb magic, but it's not the same and i like to stack it.

they actually did, the lady for example gave you a significant boost to endurance and agility, the endurance would give you a small boost to health that would if you developed on it turn into a difference of up to 100 health later on.

the serpant gave you a powerful paraliysis spell that could not be replicated but was balanced with a self harming side affect.

the steed made you faster earlier on, and thats about all, but it gave people the option to have faster characters sooner at the cost of not getting the more useful signs. the lord had a very powerful healing spell at the cost of voulnerability to fire spells

the mage gave you a boost to magicka which is very helpful to pure mage characters starting out when they are very voulnerable to melee, and there were two more signs that had higher boosts to magicka with their own penalties.

those are just a few, they all have some sort of benefit some being very powerful with strong penalties to others being mildly useful with not penalty at all.

to say birthsigns did nothing is complete falasy and ignorance. they were obviously something you never paid attention to and or you just rushed by then not bothering to know what they did.

I will miss the Atronach most of all...When I made a character with it, it altered my playstyle so much it was like I was playing the game for the first time again

I could care less about what pros and cons a birthsign gave you. I customized The Serpent to my own liking for MW & OB. I'm far more into the lore of the birthsigns. I am upset that birthsigns are gone. If they are out, are we supposed to pretend that they never existed in TESIII and IV and that all that stuff about the birthsigns never happened?

i think were suppost to create our own sign by way of the perk trees constellations

The lack of birthsigns is the only disappointing news so far for me. Everything else I've been more or less okay with, but I can't see any good reason to take them out. :sadvaultboy:

Because they want you to rely on perks as your consellation guide and they dont want you to be forced to pick something ahead of time that later down the road you might decide you didn't need, you need experience in the world to know your options and then make decisions based on this knowledge.

...

Yet another thing to mod back in.
:shakehead:

Birthsigns are still here. It's just that you don't get powers out of them anymore. In Oblivion and Morrowind, as far as I know the player was the ONLY one around with birthsign powers isn't it? Let's just assume that people blessed by the signs powers are very very uncommon and in Skyrim we get to play someone blessed with Dragonborn powers instead. Which doesn't mean he wasn't born under a birthsign either.

I agree that some are just useless later on but it's nice to just get that little something at the beginning that adds to your personal identity

Hold on everyone. The post topic is "Please don't tell me birthsigns are gone". That doesn't mean "are birthsigns gone?" He just wants to be told they're not gone.

They could've at least kept them in for aesthetic reasons. What's next? We can only choose one race to play as in TES:6?

I'll kinda miss the fun little powers some gave. Turning invisible, magical epic poison... but it might be better for overall gameplay if we progress acorrding to how we play

Haven't you read? They have kept them for aesthetic reasons, in the form of perks and skills in the menu.

I'm kinda bummed about this too. I liked having my character have a predisposition to certain skills even from the beginning because he must have known some skills before getting thrown in prison. Apparently some people don't plan their characters or even read what bonuses they're choosing if people complain about picking things at the beginning gimps their character. It's really not hard and the biggest thing that could pre-break your build is major and minor skills, which have already been removed.

I'm not a big fan of this new "streamlining" craze, I'd personally want more details, not less. Well, mods will fix these things eventually.

For those of you who don't want to read another exasperated, angry post about attributes, skip to the last paragraph.

All of these people foaming at the mouth about the "freedom" that the removal of attributes brings are so horribly wrong. The thing that brings the increased freedom to define your character as you play him is the fact that every skill can affect your leveling. Attributes have literally nothing to do with that. The only thing that removing attributes does is limit the amount of customization available. You can't be stronger because there's no strength attribute. You can't run faster because there's no speed attribute (oh but wait you can sprint, just leik in CALL OF DUTY!!!! That's an arr pee gee tooo rite?)

And now you can't customize your character by picking what is essentially a perk at the beginning of the game, for the sake of those who don't understand the game, the series, or the genre. :goodjob: :banghead:

I get you dude, and it is pretty ridiculous how as soon as Bethesda announced they were putting attributes "in the background", people immediately started saying how attributes were so limiting and too "spreadsheety" or quoting some other PR lingo. In reality, they didn't remove attributes completely but simply disallowed us to micromanage them and control how our character develops beyond perks and racial bonuses. This is a loss of freedom not more. But people insist on the new system's superiority because they want to support Bethesda, and while this is admirable in moderation, supporting every decision blindly like a yesman is plain wrong. I can still be a fan of Bethesda's work while disagreeing with some of their methods or mechanics.

Now I sincerely hope I'm wrong about all this and the background-attribute system does work out as an enjoyable enhancer to roleplaying a character, but I'll be skeptical until I experience it for myself. There were some things in Oblivion I felt were necessary to be modded out or done better through mods, and it's likely that certain aspects of Skyrim will be done better by modders as well.

Yes. but Daggerfall had a wonderful system of bonuses and weaknesses and Battlespire isnt an The elder scrolls game, its the first (and only) Elder scrolls legends game.

So all four games but Arena had ways to choose specials in character creation. I hope they arent removed, I rather liked them. It meant that one Nord pc could be vastly different from another Nord pc.
I see no reason for them to remove them, though maybe it will be like fallout and you get to choose a special character creation perk, and they are no longer called birthsigns.

Mordy: No, the player was not the only one with powers and abilities. All of the major and minor Dagoths, Dagoth Ur, Vivec, they all had custom or faction specific powers and abilities.
Mankar Camoran from Oblivion was a special case because of his mixed blood and had a whopping:


"
* Mage Birthsign: +50 Magicka
* Altmer racial abilities: +100 Magicka, 75% Resist Disease, 25% Weakness to Fire, Frost, and Shock
* Nordic racial resistances: 50% Resist Frost and 50% Resist Shock (but not the nordic lesser or greater powers)
* Breton racial resistance: 50% Resist Magic (but not the breton Fortify Magicka or greater power)
* Mankar's own custom birthsign with:
o +50 Magicka (bringing his total magicka bonus to +200)
o Fortify Sneak 100 points (making it nearly impossible to successfully sneak around him)
o Reflect Damage 25% (this is supplemented by his robe which has 7-10% Reflect Damage)
o Reflect Spell 25%
o Spell Absorption 25% (this is supplemented by his robe which has 10-20% Spell Absorption)
o Shield 25 pts "

(from UESP-wiki)

Besides, its kinda a silly argument that birthsigns are best removed because bandits didnt use them. So let bandits use them, thats the proper way forward.

You don't need Birthsigns. Remember, you are Dovahkiin!

I just assumed that they were removed since a huge number of them did nothing but boost attributes and were therefore too 'metagamey' for the Skyrim design paradigm.

From a practical game mechanics perspective I don't really care, I usually just picked "The Lady" and moved on. From a roleplaying perspective though, it would be nice to be able to choose a single perk during character creation that was associated with a birthsign. Not really gamebreaking for me if they don't, it'll just be another rp detail stored in my head instead of in the game.

And just my 2 cents on the attributes argument: I used to be uptight about the change too, since I've been playing attribute-based CRPGs since even before the original Bard's Tale (played it on a C= 128). But talent trees seem to work decently well in several modern MMOs, and the perk system may have even more potential in Skyrim due to the design focus on it. I like attribute screens too, but I'm willing to see where BGS is going with this before getting upset about it. I also hope that the construction kit provides the tools to modify or add perks, though mentioning that will likely annoy console-using types.

I wonder how they'll compensate for the loss of birthsigns (if they are truly gone, as some people have pointed out that there has been no news specifically confirming "birthsigns are out"). They probably won't compensate in any way; I feel like they're really going for this whole clean slate, all-you-choose-in-the-beginning-of-the-game-is-what-you-look-like idea.

I understand what you say about the lady.
but the point is that these starting 'perks' allowed for totally different playtime. Lady, sorry, is kinda for newbs. It makes the game easier in ways people unfamiliar might benefit from. Experienced players like the mage, apprentice or possibly atronarch.
I do like how signs give weaknesses and bonuses and I very much doubt no system will be in Slyrim to tweak the starter player like that.

Because sandbox games arnt newb friendly to begin with..



Oblivion was easy no matter what sign you chose at the start so I dont understand the point of your post. Even if you didnt abuse game mechanics for things like mass reflection, chameleon, weakness stacking, etc the game wasnt a challenge. You can make the worst character imaginable in Oblivion and still rock the game start to 'finish'.